Category: Interview

A: The blank page. It stares back and says all kinds of terrible things about you, your talent (or lack thereof), and whether or not you’ll ever come up with anything worth defacing it with. It reminds you of all the other things you might need to do before you start actually writing. It scoffs at all the ideas you want to write on it. That said, once I’ve put down a word, then a sentence, and then a paragraph, the momentum seems to build. The blank page loses its voice. It’s just that first word that’s so hard.

A: I’d say I’m 50/50. There’s the excitement and wonder of new technology and where that can take us, but then I think there’s always humanity’s baser instincts holding us back from what we could truly achieve. I could never imagine humanity, with all its failings, will ever achieve a utopia.

Mark Rookyard’s story “Tides of Reflection” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 6 May 2016. Subscribe to our e-mail updates so you’ll know when new stories go live.

A: Oh, pretty much everything. I have to be very disciplined with myself to get anything done. At the moment I’m looking out the window of my study and noticing that the ginger needs cutting back and the front bed needs weeding. Or I’ll be in the dreaded middles of my current story is and I’ll get a New Shiny Idea and I’ll quickly jot down some notes and then find I’ve written several pages of draft. Or I’ll walk past the bookshelf and something will catch my eye and half an hour later I’ll have moved on to cleaning out the cupboards and will have completely forgotten what I’m supposed to be doing. What works best for me is an empty room and a locked door, and an endless supply of good tea.

Meryl Stenhouse’s story “Gathering Dust” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 29 April 2016. Subscribe to our e-mail updates so you’ll know when new stories go live.

A: The idea for Whalesong popped into my head one day, probably when two random factoids muddled around in my brain and bumped into each other. The first was the 52-hertz whale, dubbed the loneliest whale in the world because it sings in a different frequency to other whales of its species (this is still up for debate). The other was the cleanup of the great garbage patches around the world’s oceans. The sentence that popped into my head was the 52-hertz whale is the hero, and the rest grew from there.

L. Chan’s story “Whalesong” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 15 April 2016. Subscribe to our e-mail updates so you’ll know when new stories go live.

A: I sometimes feel awful for what happens to my characters, but I don’t feel responsible. I like to think of their trajectories as inevitable. However, I’ll occasionally stay up late at night trying to think of ways to unhurt people who don’t exist. I think if I don’t feel bad, then I didn’t write the character well enough.

Tony Clavelli’s story “The Sound Barrier” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 8 April 2016. Subscribe to our e-mail updates so you’ll know when new stories go live.